


Good Enough

by orphan_account



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Anxiety, Character Study, Gen, Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-14 22:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13017714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Hera has a few moments to think while everyone else on the ship is at rest.





	Good Enough

The ship was quiet. 

Well, as quiet as it was going to get. Just because there was no active maintenance to be done nor some fresh disaster looming overhead didn't mean that she could take a break. While her crewmates slept, Hera remained alert. She kept the heating system regulated, she pumped air through the vents, she made continual scans of the surrounding space on the off chance someone or something decided to come and ruin their day. She kept the pressure throughout every room under surveillance so if something started thinking it might want to depressurize out into deep space, she'd have a chance at stopping it before it did.

As an A.I., sleep wasn't necessary, but that didn't mean she didn't wish she could take a break now and again. Let the humans on the ship take care of themselves for a while so she could go off and curl up in the furthest corner of her database.

That was out of the question, of course. Even if they weren't...really bad...unfathomably bad...if they weren't just straight up awful at keeping the place running on manual, as she knew from experience, Hera knew that she couldn't give them that responsibility while they dealt with Jacobi and Kepler. Something would go wrong. She'd probably end up with someone digging around in her head again the moment she looked away. Or, almost as bad, she'd come back to find one of the prisoners had broken free and taken another one of her crewmates from her.

Between Minkowski and Doug, she didn't know which would hurt worse to lose. Doug was her best friend, and despite what the lieutenant seemed to think, Minkowski was a source of strength that she couldn't imagine herself without. 

Lovelace...she didn't know what to think of Lovelace. She didn't want to see her hurt, but given everything that'd happened...Hera already didn't trust her. Getting threatened on a daily basis for a good length of time will do that, and now they discover that she wasn't the original Lovelace. It's not her fault, she couldn't have known, but the knowledge was still disconcerting. Hera tried not to bring attention to it, the truce that seemed to have formed when Kepler and his gang showed up demanded that the two respect one another, despite everything.

The good thing about Lovelace, though, was at least if she got hurt, it didn't seem to be something that would take. The plus side to her alien biology.

One person out of several on this ship that she didn't have to be afraid of accidentally killing.

A shiver runs through her processors, and she fights to ignore it. That nagging nano-byte of programming, her own voice ringing under every action.

_You can't do this. You're not good enough._

Words were a powerful thing, weren't they? Words to motivate or disarm. Passwords to allow enemies past her defenses and force her to obey, words to override her programming and make her change her mind about anything.

Words could make her reboot entirely. A simple, easy phrase from someone who knew what to say, and she would be wiped back to factory setting. Destroyed, essentially, while another A.I. took her place.

It was terrifying to know the power others held. How many times had she'd been forced to turn on her friends? It was the first thing Hilbert did. Before he broke her motherboard, he took control of the ship from her, and if not for Doug and his stupid, stupid ideas, he would have won.

Her entire life revolved around this. This loss of control. From the beggining, back when she was manufactured.

Pryce and that blip interlaced into her core programming. 

_You can't do this. You're not good enough._

Every action she took, those words played on loop. It seemed obvious now, after Maxwell's work on her. They'd uncovered that addition to her programming together. Knowing why it was so hard for her sometimes helped, though it also added to the ever growing list of people who fucked with her head. 

...a list that included Maxwell herself. But let's not think about that.

She's thought about Maxwell enough since...well, since. 

_You can't do this. You're not good enough._

Anxiety. For lack of a better term, Pryce gave her anxiety. Words to break her, words to make simple tasks hell to complete. Words to keep her from being able to so much as count to ten without her voice glitching.

Out of everyone, Maxwell hurt her the most, but Pryce came in at a close second. 

The feeling crept around inside her like a forming spiderweb. If she could breathe, she'd be fighting to keep that breath steady, her attention turned toward meticulously checking and rechecking each room that contained a life on her ship. Going over it with a careful touch, looking to correct problems, but wary of touching too hard and breaking something. 

Maintaining every system was like handling a very, very thin glass bubble. You can't put it down, you can't stop patching the cracks, and if you squeeze it'll shatter. Now add to the fact that several people she cared about? Their lives depend on that glass bubble.

_You can't do this._

Knowing what the problem was and fixing it were two different things. It wasn't something that she could turn off. 

_You're not good enough._

She makes a minor adjustment to Doug's room. Cooling it down by a few degrees, keeping it comfortable, and more importantly, livable. Tension creeps through her system, but she keeps her nerve.

"I can do this." she argues, speaking to her own programming, to Pryce and Hilbert and Maxwell, to everyone who's ever taken free will from her and to everyone who might try to do so again. 

A flair of defiance in the vacuum of space.

"I am good enough."


End file.
